Goal Planning – Part 3

By: Rachel, on May 17, 2017

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As we discussed in Part 2 of this series, creating a vision is the first step you want to take in goal planning. Next, I want to talk about 5 things that might be holding you back from reaching your goals and how you can turn them around.

You set other people’s goals – What I mean by that, is that you’re trying to achieve something that someone else wants for you, not necessarily what you want for yourself.Your goals need to be your own, not just what others want for you. A career goal needs to suit you, not an image of you others may have for you. You have to really want the goal because you’re the one who has to do all the work. So make sure your goals are consistent with what you value and believe in.

You set negative goals – Too many times we focus on what we DON’T want instead of what we DO want.If one of your goals is to “lose weight” that can positively be rephrased as “improve my health”. Or if you have a career goal that’s “I don’t want to still be working in retail in 5 years,” can be changed to “I want to own my own business.” Knowing what you DO want will help you stay focused on achieving the goal.

You don’t review your progress – If you set goals but never go back and evaluate how your progress is going or how you’re doing, how will you know if you’re on track or if you’re missing the mark for achieving your goals?Doing a reevaluation, ideally every week, can help you see where you are and where you might need to make adjustments. Just because you set a plan at the beginning, doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. If something isn’t working, don’t be afraid to change it up.

You’re overwhelmed – When you try to focus on too many tasks at once, you become overwhelmed and instead of achieving what you set out to do, you end up doing nothing.To avoid this, you can take each big goal and break it into small tasks. This way you can see what actions it will actually take to reach your goals. This will help you focus on the smaller daily activities rather than feeling overwhelmed by everything at once.

You have limiting beliefs – Whether you know it or not, you probably have beliefs that are holding you back. They may have stemmed from your childhood, where a family member or teacher told you that you couldn’t do something. Or from a job where you failed to complete a task and was never given a chance to correct it or learn from your mistakes. And this may have given you the feeling that you’re not good enough.The truth is that you are WHO and WHAT you tell yourself you are, not what anyone else tells you. Only you can decide what’s possible for yourself and for your life. So practice turning those negative thoughts off and tell yourself what you know to be true

So those are 5 things to look out for as we move into making an actual plan and start setting some goals in the next part of the series.